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The future. It has arrived. I remember reading a few years ago that sports writing is very formulaic and should be possible to automate. At the time, nobody had

by cryptoz 16y ago

The future. It has arrived. I remember reading a few years ago that sports writing is very formulaic and should be possible to automate. At the time, nobody had really done it...but here we are. It's fantastic to see all this "weak AI" out there, making people money and building a reputation for being better than most humans at a task previously thought to be human-only. Are we slowly walking directly towards strong AI, with all our little tiny steps of weak AI? I can't wait.

JonnieCache 16y ago
Surely strong AI is by definition such a paradigm shift that it cannot be achieved with lots of little steps of weak AI? I thought that was kind of the point of the strong/weak AI dichotomy.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  Sure, and that's why I phrased that suggestion as a question. Maybe we're not walking towards strong AI with weak AI steps. But...with AI writing sports articles now, it seems logical to wonder if perhaps small progressions in the capabilities of weak AI systems will result in real, full AGI.
  - abstractbill 16y ago
    Maybe we're not walking towards strong AI with weak AI steps. Just a random thought, but even if all of our weak AI systems don't directly result in us being able to build a strong AI, maybe they will do so indirectly. We might be able to use all of these weak AI systems to train a more general-purpose strong AI system.
- jerf 16y ago
  A definition has no power to change the engineering feasibility of a task. If it is possible to build a strong AI from a series of weak AI steps, which is certainly not out of the question (one can argue that's how human brains work), no amount of definition will change that.
  - joshes 16y ago
    This takes us back to the problem of emergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence), something that AI researchers, entomologists, economists, et al. have been struggling with for some time.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    However if we accept the definition, then it is surely meaningless (pointless?) to discuss AI progress in those terms. EDIT: what i really mean is that I reject the strong/weak AI dichotomy. I really need to resist the urge to play pointless semantic games. Guess thats an occupational hazard of programming all day long.
ido 16y ago
Playing chess better than humans was also once considered as would-be proof of "Real AI". As soon as we get an AI doing something that was previously considered intelligent that task is retroactively relabeled as not really requiring intelligence, and consequently "Real AI" remains out of reach.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  That's the AI Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect Personally, I believe there's a tipping point where our society will no longer be able to live in denial that we've built AI. We're not there yet since there are still a huge number of things people can do that computers can't. For example, no AI has really passed the Turing Test yet. So pretty obviously, we don't yet have "Real AI", and I understand the AI Effect, even though it's unfortunate. But surely, there's a point where it'll be blindingly obvious that our machines are intelligent?
  - njharman 16y ago
    Artificial Intelligence is not hard, we've had it for awhile i.e. chess. Lay people think AI means something like artificial intuition. Which is very hard and can only be done poorly within narrow domains.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    The point where it is blindingly obvious that we have created intelligent machines will require passing the point where it is blindingly obvious what "intelligence" is. I would go further to describe these as a circular dependency.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      Indeed, it seems like some peoples' definition of "intelligence" is "what humans can do that computers can't".
      - JonnieCache 16y ago
javanix 16y ago
No, this does not herald the future. This heralds the relatively-recent arrival of advanced statistics to the college basketball world - rebounding percentages, scoring percentages, runs -- these are pieces of information anyone could glean by simply looking at a box score, or, at worst, looking at a site with advanced metrics like www.kenpomeroy.com. All of the game recaps read basically the same - a sure sign of a homogenous data set combined with some fairly crafty name-replacement. Perhaps this could replace the AP game recaps, but anything beyond that is still far beyond our AI reach.
- smokinn 16y ago
  Well it's a first step. The next step is pretty obvious: Use voice recognition software to analyze the remarks made by the announcers over the course of the game and blend that into the reporting. If you can properly analyze inflection and special events from the speech of the live game you can add game highlights to the article.

by cryptoz 16y ago

JonnieCache 16y ago

Surely strong AI is by definition such a paradigm shift that it cannot be achieved with lots of little steps of weak AI? I thought that was kind of the point of the strong/weak AI dichotomy.

cryptoz 16y ago
Sure, and that's why I phrased that suggestion as a question. Maybe we're not walking towards strong AI with weak AI steps. But...with AI writing sports articles now, it seems logical to wonder if perhaps small progressions in the capabilities of weak AI systems will result in real, full AGI.
- abstractbill 16y ago
  Maybe we're not walking towards strong AI with weak AI steps. Just a random thought, but even if all of our weak AI systems don't directly result in us being able to build a strong AI, maybe they will do so indirectly. We might be able to use all of these weak AI systems to train a more general-purpose strong AI system.
jerf 16y ago
A definition has no power to change the engineering feasibility of a task. If it is possible to build a strong AI from a series of weak AI steps, which is certainly not out of the question (one can argue that's how human brains work), no amount of definition will change that.
- joshes 16y ago
  This takes us back to the problem of emergence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence), something that AI researchers, entomologists, economists, et al. have been struggling with for some time.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  However if we accept the definition, then it is surely meaningless (pointless?) to discuss AI progress in those terms. EDIT: what i really mean is that I reject the strong/weak AI dichotomy. I really need to resist the urge to play pointless semantic games. Guess thats an occupational hazard of programming all day long.

ido 16y ago

Playing chess better than humans was also once considered as would-be proof of "Real AI". As soon as we get an AI doing something that was previously considered intelligent that task is retroactively relabeled as not really requiring intelligence, and consequently "Real AI" remains out of reach.

cryptoz 16y ago
That's the AI Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect Personally, I believe there's a tipping point where our society will no longer be able to live in denial that we've built AI. We're not there yet since there are still a huge number of things people can do that computers can't. For example, no AI has really passed the Turing Test yet. So pretty obviously, we don't yet have "Real AI", and I understand the AI Effect, even though it's unfortunate. But surely, there's a point where it'll be blindingly obvious that our machines are intelligent?
- njharman 16y ago
  Artificial Intelligence is not hard, we've had it for awhile i.e. chess. Lay people think AI means something like artificial intuition. Which is very hard and can only be done poorly within narrow domains.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  The point where it is blindingly obvious that we have created intelligent machines will require passing the point where it is blindingly obvious what "intelligence" is. I would go further to describe these as a circular dependency.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Indeed, it seems like some peoples' definition of "intelligence" is "what humans can do that computers can't".
    - JonnieCache 16y ago

javanix 16y ago

No, this does not herald the future. This heralds the relatively-recent arrival of advanced statistics to the college basketball world - rebounding percentages, scoring percentages, runs -- these are pieces of information anyone could glean by simply looking at a box score, or, at worst, looking at a site with advanced metrics like www.kenpomeroy.com. All of the game recaps read basically the same - a sure sign of a homogenous data set combined with some fairly crafty name-replacement. Perhaps this could replace the AP game recaps, but anything beyond that is still far beyond our AI reach.

smokinn 16y ago
Well it's a first step. The next step is pretty obvious: Use voice recognition software to analyze the remarks made by the announcers over the course of the game and blend that into the reporting. If you can properly analyze inflection and special events from the speech of the live game you can add game highlights to the article.